Guangzhou's new 13 billion yuan (US$1.6 billion) railway station will contain 15 platforms and 28 tracks about four times more than the existing station.

The final design has now been approved for the station, which will have four floors, including one underground. The complex will cover an area of 377, 600 square metres.

Its three floors that are above ground will be for waiting halls for VIP passengers and everyday commuters of express railways between Wuhan and Guangzhou, Guangzhou and Zhuhai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, and Guangzhou and Hong Kong, while the floor underground will be for metro passengers.

The new station will be capable of handling 78 million passengers annually when it opens in 2008, said Wu Junguang, president and general manger of Guangzhou Railway Group.

Its final passenger handling capacity will reach 116 million people annually, he said.

Wu said that the final design was meticulously handpicked from nine designs, submitted by 16 renowned design institutes from home and abroad.

He said the chosen one was comprehensively better than the others in terms of function, systems, application of modern technology, design and costs.

He said the new station will have seamless connections to both metro lines and expressways to other Pearl River Delta cities.

The new station will be a significant improvement on the existing site.

Built more than 30 years ago, the current station has only four platforms. Its waiting halls, as well as entrances and exits for passengers, are outdated.

The station handled about 5.5 million passengers during the last Spring Festival, official statistics indicate.

But Jin Wenzhou, a professor with the South China University of Technology, raised some concerns and said he was worried about major traffic jams on bridges from the new station to downtown Guangzhou.

Apart from the metro lines, there are currently two main bridges to handle public traffic between downtown and the new station.

(China Daily March 14, 2006)